The Chicago Seven and Court Justice
Chapman, William
The Chicago Seven and Court Justice The Barnyard Epithet And Other Obscenities: Notes on the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, by J. Anthony Lukas, Harper & Row. 107 pp. $4.95 cloth; 95 cents...
...It became apparent," writes Epstein in The Great Conspiracy Trial, "that the protestors had not so much challenged a political machine as they had intruded upon the tranquility of a rich, proud, and powerful family...
...The evidence was weak, but Chicago's determination to exact retribution from someone was not...
...Merely explaining the issues— the confusing anti-riot law, the theory of conspiracy, the procedural technicalities by which Judge Hoffman governed—would be no easy achievement...
...courts...
...He does not think that Judge Julius J. Hoffman's courtroom necessarily represents the norm of the American judicial system, but his faith is shaken...
...7.95...
...The Great Conspiracy Trial, by Jason Epstein...
...The flowers of spring shall bloom upon their graves, moistened by the tears of a great city...
...For David Dellinger, the other defendants, and their lawyers to confront Judge Hoffman and U.S...
...Epstein's book is exceptional, and it is far more than an account of the trial...
...Insinuating remarks" by the judge...
...We have only to substitute the name of Judge Hoffman, whose mere reading of the indictment brought against the Chicago Seven was, according to one juror, an imputation of guilt...
...The defendants were not confronting a detached and impartial judge, sitting as an aloof arbiter, and a prosecution divorced from political considerations...
...One hundred pages later, after presenting a kaleidoscopic set of glimpses of the Chicago trial, Lukas acknowledges a kind of transformation...
...Random House...
...Headlines like Federal Court Orders New Georgia School Plan or Judge Bans Bias in Memphis Parks/' he writes, "helped form my view of the Federal district judge as a dispassionate scholar dedicated to the law and fearlessly defiant of local pressures and politics...
...In sporting jargon, it is known as a rematch...
...Governor Altgeld, in a courageous act, pardoned three of the anarchists and accused Judge Gary of conducting the trial with "malicious ferocity," of making insinuating remarks "with the evident intent of bringing the jury to his way of thinking...
...Attorney Thomas Foran was not so much different from confronting Daley's police in Grant Park...
...that in effect had licensed police to commit acts of violence, and that had stacked the Democratic National Convention hall one night for a pitiful display of fealty to Mayor Richard J. Daley...
...How familiar this recollection seems...
...A key prosecution witness was soon to become a law partner of Mayor Daley's son...
...Clearly," he writes in his book on the Chicago trial, "a Federal district court is not always a Temple of Justice...
...The mayor's assistant who had negotiated the question of permits with Rennie Davis was a personal friend of prosecutor Foran, who in turn had been a Daley protege...
...attorneys he had ever seen...
...433 pp...
...If only the jury returned a verdict of guilty, said U.S...
...In times like these, white marble and black robes are not enough to insulate courts from the passions which rage outside...
...His theme is that the trial is what happens when a political system or a set of moral values is under attack...
...Foran, exclaimed Judge Hoffman at one point, was one of the finest U.S...
...95 cents paperback...
...District Court proved to be merely another extension of a political system that had denied legitimate requests for demonstration and assembly permits...
...The Haymarket jury was led to believe, said Altgeld, that it could return a guilty verdict if it concluded "that there was a conspiracy to overthrow the existing order of society and that the defendants were party to such a conspiracy and that the policeman was killed by a bomb thrown by a party to the conspiracy...
...It has been easy to place it at the back of our minds, or to recall only the turmoil and occasional raucous humor it produced...
...The judge who rejected a suit designed to obtain those permits was a former law partner of Mayor Daley...
...Epstein has captured the message admirably in a book that ought to be read...
...Perhaps the greatest danger of the Chicago Conspiracy trial is that it will be forgotten too soon...
...Reviewed by William Chapman T ike most liberals, Anthony Lukas has grown up with an ingrained veneration for U.S...
...The banners can snap m the breeze again...
...He has managed to place the chaotic events of the 1969-70 winter in historical perspective, giving the trial a reality it seemed to lack while in process...
...Early in his brief, impressionistic book, he recalls from the recent past how he felt as he approached the courtroom in which the "Chicago Seven" conspiracy trial was to be held...
...One can even imagine that the same speech writer wrote the prosecution summations for both trials...
...The looseness of the conspiracy charge to which Altgeld referred was no more vague and mystifying than the riot law under which the Seven were charged—a law making it illegal to conspire to use facilities of interstate commerce with intent to incite a riot...
...What we fondly call the "last resort," it turned out, was not much different from the other institutions in which those of us who subscribe to the "system" are expected to place our faith, and that is a sobering realization...
...Eight decades earlier the Haymarket prosecutor implored the jury to demonstrate the same civic courage for the dead policemen, so that the officers could "rest in peace...
...Mastering them and fitting them into a historical framework is a formidable work...
...There are the same appeals to patriotism followed by assertions that everything we hold dear could be saved by one swift verdict...
...Epstein recalls the great Haymarket Trial of anarchists who were accused of throwing the bomb which killed seven Chicago policemen in 1886...
...In Chicago, at least, the U.S...
...The relationship is made more explicit in Jason Epstein's admirable account of the trial...
...This Epstein has done...
...Attorney Thomas Foran in February, 1970, "The lights that Gamelot kids believe in need not go out...
...They were facing the home team again...
...But between the lines was a message worth remembering—that the courts are not as dependable as we think and that history has demonstrated their vulnerability to political passions and expediency...
...That is perhaps a bland summation for one of the more outrageous courtroom dramas of our times, but Lukas's experience is a key to understanding why the Chicago Seven trial was so traumatic an experience for the Left...
Vol. 35 • January 1971 • No. 1
